Australia

Sam Watson, Socialist Alliance Senate candidate for Queensland. Longstanding leader of the Aboriginal community of Brisbane, campaigner against Black deaths in custody and for Indigenous rights.

On July 24, 2010, Australia's leading socialist newspaper Green Left Weekly spoke to Peter Boyle, national convener of the Socialist Alliance, about the political climate of the 2010 federal election, to be held on August 21.

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Many progressive people are feeling depressed about the federal election. How do you see it?

The Australian Labor Party and the conservative Liberal Party-National Party Coalition are in a “race to the
bottom”, as Socialist Alliance lead Queensland Senate candidate and
Murri [Indigenous] community leader Sam Watson aptly put it.

July 24, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- Forget about the climate science and the record high temperatures.
Australia's Prime Minister Julia Gillard has decided she doesn’t need a serious
climate change policy to win the August 21 federal election. In its place, she kicked off her election campaign on July 18 with a
“sustainable Australia” policy. It promised a future of low population
growth, which “preserves our quality of life and respects our
environment”.

Opposition leader and climate denier Tony Abbott was quick to say he
fully agreed with this vision, but was even more committed to it than
Gillard.

From a conservative point of view it makes sense to raise the spectre
of overpopulation in this election campaign. Population control is the
mother of all political diversion tactics. Population levels explain nothing about social problems. But they can
be scapegoated for just about everything, from traffic jams and home
prices to grocery bills and climate change.

July 24, 2010 -- Green Left Weekly -- In one of her first policy changes after replacing Kevin Rudd as
leader of the Australian Labor Party, Prime Minister Julia Gillard dumped Rudd’s
idea of a “big Australia”. On June 26, Gillard said “Australia should not hurtle down the track
towards a big population”. Instead, she called for a “sustainable
population”.

Almost four weeks on, however, Labor’s policy has no details — just
lots of rhetoric designed to pander to fears that immigration
(particularly asylum seekers) is causing a raft of social problems.

An absract `price on carbon' is the favoured solution of supporters of
business-as-usual. Photo by Lauren Carroll Harris.

By Simon Butler

July 18, 2010 -- Pressure is now bearing down on the Australian climate movement
because there has been so little forward progress in the federal
government’s climate policy. The pressure is for the movement to accept, support and campaign for
weak or inadequate climate policies on the grounds that something is
better than nothing.

This is plain from looking at the new, media-driven “consensus” about
the need for a “price on carbon”.

Putting a price on carbon is not the best way to deal with climate
change, but a growing chorus of media commentators, NGOs and
politicians are nonetheless plugging it as the key solution.

Many who advocate a price on carbon would agree that we face a dire
climate emergency. The problem is that they are willing to let the
emergency response be privatised.

July 2010 -- For years, climate scientists have warned us that we need to act on
climate change. Now, science is saying that climate change is taking
place more rapidly than everyone previously thought.

The warning signs are obvious. April and May were the world’s hottest
months since records began. This year’s Arctic ice sheet melt is taking
place at a pace never seen before.

Scientists say carbon pollution has made the world’s oceans more acidic
than they have been for at least 20 million years.

There is already too much carbon in the atmosphere. The warming already
in the system risks the crossing of various natural “tipping points”
that would raise temperatures further and faster.

If these points are crossed, it would bring average temperatures to
levels that have not existed for millions of years, and to which today’s
nature is simply not adapted.

Dili, July 7, 2010 -- According to
Australian foreign affairs policy announced by the
Australian prime minister in Sydney recently and published by a range of media,
including the Indonesian newspaper the Java Post, “Prime Minister
(PM) Julia Gillard has tightened Australia immigration law. Not wanting
to be bothered by the economic and social problems caused by asylum
seekers, the Australian leader plans to build a detention center for
asylum seekers in Timor-Leste” As quoted by Associated Press (Java
Post, 07/07/2010).

July 6, 2010 -- With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese
community in Australia, Green Left Weekly -- Australia's leading
socialist newspaper -- publishes a regular Arabic language
supplement. The Flamecovers news from the
Arabic-speaking world as well as news and issues
from within Australia. Editor-in-chief is Soubhi Iskander is a
comrade who has endured years of imprisonment and torture at the hands
of the repressive government in Sudan.

“There are Arabic
newspapers in Australia, but still all reflect the views of their
editors and there is a great need to establish a progressive
Arabic-language press which can frankly discuss the squalid condition
of the Arab world due to submission and subservience to
neo-colonialism”, Iskander explains. “At the same time, the
Arabic-speaking communities in Australia need to read articles relating
to the Australian government policy internally — articles which will
unmask the pitfalls of these policies, and will expose the violation
and the lies of the capitalist parties. The Flame, we hope, will
be a
powerful addition to Green Left Weekly.”

Lenin: "In its
struggle for power the proletariat has no other weapon but organisation".

By Dave Holmes

Today humanity faces a
global crisis stemming from the incredible rapacity of the capitalist
system. In the first place, there is catastrophic climate change which
threatens to end life on our planet, then there is endemic war and
conflict, mass poverty in the Third World and neoliberalism's ever more
ruthless assault on working people everywhere.

Capitalism will destroy
the human race. It is absolutely clear that the bourgeoisie will
continue to put the drive for corporate profit ahead of everything, even
our own future as a species. It is incapable of changing. Even when it
recognises the danger it cannot stop doing what it does. If capitalism
is not overthrown, humanity is most likely doomed.

The only way out is the
abolition of capitalism and its replacement by socialism. And the only
means to do this is anti-imperialist revolutions in the Third World and
proletarian socialist revolutions in the advanced capitalist countries.

May 26, 2010 -- For
environmentalists, Indigenous rights activists, feminists, socialists
and all progressive people, Latin America is a source of hope and
inspiration today. The people of Venezuela, Cuba, Bolivia, Ecuador and
El Salvador, among others, are showing that radical social change is
possible and a better, more just society can be imagined and built.

The
tide of rebellion and revolution now sweeping Latin America is
posing a serious challenge to imperialism’s brutal global rule. For
anyone who wants an end to war, exploitation and oppression, Latin
America’s struggles to create alternatives are crucially important.

Australia's leading socialist newspaper Green Left Weekly
is strongly committed to supporting the growing “people’s power”
movement in Latin America. We are proud of the fact that GLW
is the only Australian newspaper to have a permanent bureau in Latin
America, based in Caracas, Venezuela. Through our weekly articles on
developments in the region, GLW strives to counter the corporate
media’s many lies about Latin
America’s revolutions, and to give a voice in English to the people’s
movements for change.

May 24, 2010 -- Even as the Australian federal Labor government sticks its Carbon Pollution Reduction Scheme [carbon trading scheme] into the freezer the climate change crisis intensifies, demanding a response adequate to its enormity. The goal dictated by climate science is annual emissions reductions of 5% from now to 2020 -- the critical "transition decade".

Policies such as a carbon tax and feed-in tariffs have a role to play in reaching that target, but there is no way it will be remotely achieved without a vast increase in public investment in programs that strip back carbon emissions in the key problem sectors -- energy generation, transport, land use, buildings and carbon-intensive industry.

Public investment, planning and oversight is the irreplaceable centrepiece of adequate climate action.

May 2010 -- With the help of Socialist Alliance members in the growing Sudanese
community in Australia, Green Left Weekly -- Australia's leading
socialist newspaper -- publishes a regular Arabic language
supplement. The Flamecovers news from the Arabic-speaking world as well as news and issues
from within Australia. Editor-in-chief is Soubhi Iskander is a
comrade who has endured years of imprisonment and torture at the hands
of the repressive government in Sudan.

“There are Arabic
newspapers in Australia, but still all reflect the views of their
editors and there is a great need to establish a progressive
Arabic-language press which can frankly discuss the squalid condition
of the Arab world due to submission and subservience to
neo-colonialism”, Iskander explains. “At the same time, the
Arabic-speaking communities in Australia need to read articles relating
to the Australian government policy internally — articles which will
unmask the pitfalls of these policies, and will expose the violation
and the lies of the capitalist parties. The Flame, we hope, will
be a
powerful addition to Green Left Weekly.”

On May 16, 2010, an emergency rally in solidarity with the democracy movement in Thailand was held outside the Sydney Town Hall. More photos below.

By Thai Red Australia Group for Democracy

May 16, 2010 -- Since March 14, Bangkok has been the scene of mass pro-democracy
protests. The protesters known as “Red Shirts” have demanded the
resignation of unelected Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva and new
elections. Abhisit came to power in December through the overthrow of a
democratically elected government by right-wing “Yellow Shirt” gangs,
assisted by the military and elements of the royal family.

April 23, 2010 -- Several representatives from Australia's climate justice movement attended the World People’s Conference on Climate Change and the Rights of Mother Earth held in Bolivia, April 19-22, 2010. They included activists from Beyond Zero Emissions, Rising Tide, Socialist Alliance, Climate Emergency Action Network of South Australia and inner city climate action groups Yarra Climate Action Now (Melbourne) and Climate Action Newtown (Sydney). Below Links International Journal of Socialist Renewal collects some of their accounts.